


afterwards

by wjjmwmsn5



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Gen, Iron Dad, Iron Dad is the best dad, Trans Peter Parker, Trans Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 11:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11827590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wjjmwmsn5/pseuds/wjjmwmsn5
Summary: Peter is plagued by transphobia and the memory of a building falling on top of him.





	afterwards

**Author's Note:**

> requested by goshua on tumblr. my url is transpeterparkers.  
> idk how i feel about this one but here it is. let me know if you like it!

**** Happy drove him to the Avengers compound in silence as always, but the difference this time was that Peter wasn’t pressing that silence. He watched out the window as the world flew by, tapping his fingers on his legs and worrying about how this trip was going to go. 

The last two times he’d spent a weekend at the compound, it was really fun. But the last two times he went, he had been in a good mood, excited for a weekend at the Avengers compound, a weekend hanging out with Tony. The last two times, they had talked about science and the Avengers and watched movies with Rhodey. Tony had answered his abundant questions and seemed to genuinely enjoy talking about his suit and his classes with him.

This time, all Peter wanted to do was curl up in his bed.

When they got there, he grabbed his bag out of the trunk silently, walking toward the side door closest to the living area of the Avengers compound. He still had his earphones in, grounding him in the moment away from the sounds of the people who bustled around the compound all the time. As he walked into the open space of the building, a flash of wings burying him under rubble appeared out of the corner of his eye and he felt his breath catch.

“Hey, kiddo,” Tony called from down the hallway. The sound of Liz’s dad’s voice echoing through the warehouse came back to him, a little distant with the music in his ears, weaving itself in with Tony’s words. He stood still near the doorway, his heart caught in his chest.

Tony was approaching him, walking into the room, and he could tell from the way he slowed down as he got closer that he could see something was wrong. Peter watched him, the clothes he was wearing feeling restrictive and the music playing in his ears seeming to go up a couple volume levels. 

“What’s up?” Tony asked cautiously. 

Peter had forgotten how to talk, but he felt like even if he could open his mouth, the thought of trying to explain what he was feeling would only grate at his skin. 

“Are you okay?” Tony was coming closer again, his hand out and coming to rest on his shoulder. He was the king of dadly shoulder-grabbing moments. It tied Peter to the moment, and he reached up and tugged the earphones out of his ears. “Hey, talk to me, Pete.”

Tony’s face looked like May’s did when she wanted him to open up. He felt swallowed in how tightly he had kept his fear to his chest lately, because there was no way he was going to tell May about being trapped underneath a building. And he usually talked to her about the way some kids at school treated him like shit, but those things still piled up. 

It wasn’t that he felt like it was easier with Tony, but more that Peter felt like he would understand it better than May might. And he wasn’t going to worry so much that he would take away the suit if he heard about Peter’s anxieties.

He wanted to pour everything out at once, but all that came out was the initial cause of his low mood: “I lost the binder you made me.” 

Tony paused for a moment, assessing that, and then squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll make you another before you leave this weekend,” he promised him. “Don’t worry about that. Guess I should have thought ahead to make a spare.”

Peter shook his head, because this really wasn’t all about the binder that Tony had made him. It had sucked, but he had worn his original sweatshirt over his spidey suit to make up for the fact that he didn’t have the special-made binder. “But I lost it, and it was really warm so I didn’t really want to wear a sweatshirt while I was out, and there was this guy and he asked why I was wearing my pajamas out to fight people, which was stupid and shouldn’t have bothered me but it made me all self-conscious about the sweatshirt—”

“Hey, I really am listening, kiddo, but you’re talking way too fast.” Tony put an arm around his shoulders, guiding him over to the couch for them to sit. He sunk back into it, remembering watching all the movies with Tony and Rhodey here. “So someone was an asshole?”

Peter fiddled with his headphones, twisting them between his fingers. He felt like it was bad for the cord, but he liked having something to do with his hands. “The sweatshirt guy didn’t bother me too much. It’s just— everyone’s an asshole. Not everyone, I guess, but a lot of people.” He was still talking quickly, but not so quickly that Tony looked lost. 

“Yeah, there are always gonna be assholes,” he said. Peter looked over at Tony, hoping that his only words of advice weren’t to resign himself to their asshole behavior. He had been putting up with transphobes for a lot more years than Peter had, and in the public eye, too, so he was sure he had some way of dealing with them—at least in his head. “You know what I do when the assholes get to me?”

“No.” The question was rhetorical, he knew, but he spoke before he thought about just letting Tony go on. 

“I think,  _ I’m fucking Iron Man. _ ” 

Peter smiled a little bit. “That makes you feel better?”

“Well, they’re not Iron Man, are they? They’re just an asshole with nothing better to do,” Tony said. “And if thinking  _ I’m fucking Spider-Man _ doesn’t help, you think about the not-assholes.” 

Peter nodded.  _ I’m fucking Spider-Man.  _ He had stopped an illegal weapons dealer before—from a plane in the air. That was pretty cool. People like Flash and his buddies hadn’t done anything like that. 

And it was pretty cool thinking about the way he and MJ could joke about cis people together, or the fact that he chose to remember Uncle Ben through making Benjamin his middle name.

“What do you do when you remember things though?” Peter asked, uncertain of himself. He didn’t know that he liked acknowledging that those feelings were back there. It was scary in and of itself that the memories haunted him like they did. “Like, things that happen while you fight.”

Tony seemed to understand immediately. “Has that night been bothering you?” he asked him, guilt peppering each word like it was his fault that Peter gained superpowers and ended up fighting Liz’s dad. 

“Sometimes. In big buildings sometimes I see the wings flying around me,” he admitted, and it felt better than he thought it would to finally let that live outside of his head. In his head, it was a monster thriving around him when he was the most afraid, but aloud, he knew that it wasn’t real. Toomes wasn’t coming back. 

“So that’s why you got a little”—he made a random gesture with his hands—“when you came in.”

Peter nodded. 

Tony thought for a moment, and then let out a breath. “I have to remember to breathe. I have to remember where I am, not what’s happened to me,” he told him. He wrapped an arm around Peter’s shoulders again. “I’m sorry, kid. It’s not fair that you have to deal with all of this.”

Peter shook his head, not liking the way Tony spoke like he had caused every bad thing in his life, right down to Uncle Ben’s death and the transphobia and all of it, or something. “I don’t want to not be Spider-Man just because I see things sometimes,” he told him. “I still want to help people. I want other people to not have to be hurt by people like Toomes.”

Tony squeezed his shoulder. “God, you’re a good kid. How are you such a good kid?”

Peter looked over at him, listening to the lingering guilt and the pride mingle in his voice. He wanted to say something clever, but it took him too long to come up with something. “Thank you,” he said instead. 

Tony smiled a little and patted his back. “Do you want to watch a movie? I think Vision wants to join in this time,” he said. 

Peter nodded, a smile coming to his face as well. That talk had made him feel better, but not completely perfect. But watching a movie was easy, and didn’t require talking if he didn’t want to talk. Plus, he felt like watching a movie with Vision would be cool. Everything with Vision was cool. He was like a fucking robot guy who walked through walls—he was automatically cool 100% of the time. 

“I’m a good kid because I’m fucking Spider-Man,” he blurted out as he thought of it, but it wasn’t until after he said it that he realized it wasn’t even clever enough to say when they had moved past that topic. Actually, it made little sense at all, but he stood by it anyway.

Tony rolled his eyes at him. “You think you can handle making the popcorn?” he asked. “I’ll get Vision and Rhodey.”

“Of course I can, I’m fucking Spider-Man.” He stood up, setting his bag down by the couch and dropping the earphones on the table. 

“Why do I get the feeling May doesn’t let you say ‘fuck’?” 

Peter shrugged. “Don’t know where you would get that from at all.” 

Tony grinned a little bit. “Well, hey. Good to see you’ve got your sense of humor back.”

“Fucking Spider-Man never loses his sense of humor.” He went into the kitchen to make the popcorn, pulling out a couple of bowls to dump it into. 

“Fucking Iron Man and fucking War Machine want the cheesy kind,” Tony called back into the kitchen as he disappeared down the hallway to retrieve the other two. 


End file.
